UNITED STATES SIGNS ACCORD WITH AZERBAIJAN
The aid, which will include the supply of equipment and spare parts as well as personnel training, will be used to strengthen Azerbaijan's national borders, carry out security operations and reinforce Azerbaijan's radar and communications systems, the U.S. Embassy said.
The agreement was signed between Azerbaijan's Defense Minister Safar Abiyev and U.S. Ambassador Reno Harnish.
Azerbaijan, an oil-rich Caspian Sea shore country, lies in the troubled Caucasus region, an area that both the United States and Russia have tried to assert their influence over since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Baku has welcomed U.S. attention. The Azerbaijan government supported the U.S.-led war in Iraq and has contributed troops to the postwar stabilization forces there.
The new agreement with the United States "clearly confirms the deepening and widening cooperation between Azerbaijan and the United States," Abiyev was quoted by Azerbaijan's information agency Azertaj as saying.
He expressed hope that the United States would play a greater role in helping to resolve the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh - one of many still smoldering conflicts in the region, the Defense Ministry's press service said.
Armenian-backed forces drove Azerbaijan's army out of the ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. A cease-fire was signed in 1994, but no agreement has been reached on the enclave's final status and the uneasy truce is broken by sporadic bursts of gunfire and marred by mutual recriminations.
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